NVIDIA quietly begins to offer laptop 5070 12GB

Finally, some good news during the RAM crisis.

Recently, users have been spotting that NVIDIA is releasing new laptop 5070 GPUs that have 12GB of VRAM, instead of the normal 8GB on other laptop 5070s. This is great news, as more VRAM is nearly always better for the user experience, and especially now, when RAM prices are so out of control, having an increase in RAM for this mid-range is great news.

The new 5070 12GB laptop variant will live alongside the 8GB model, giving users more choice over what they are buying. The 12GB model also uses new RAM chips, Tom's Hardware points out, and "the use of 24Gb (3GB) modules allows for the use of the same bus width as the existing 8GB model, preventing memory bandwidth from improving through a larger memory interface."

This is important, because it means that there won't be any substantial bandwidth increases in this upgrade. Essentially, the speed at which data can travel is still the same as the 8GB model, just the amount of storage for that data is increasing. This is fine, as the 8GB model had good enough bandwidth performance, but it is interesting nonetheless.

While we do not have any specific benchmarks of it yet, we can assume that even though there is a 50 percent increase in VRAM, this will still not equate to a 50 percent increase in performance. Adding 4GB of VRAM is still substantial and will offer performance increases that are noticeable in games and professional work, but the leap on paper most likely will not be nearly as big in the real world.

The concept of having the same name for desktop and laptop GPUs, but having the performance, and most importantly, VRAM amounts, be in stark contrast is a confusing one, especially for consumers. The fact that NVIDIA is now matching the 5070 laptop VRAM to the desktop with 12GB of VRAM is a step in the right direction, but until the laptop counterpart has similar enough performance, it will still be just as confusing to understand what kind of performance you will be getting.

NVIDIA's increase in VRAM for the laptop 5070 from 8GB to 12GB is a major step forwards in the RAM crisis we live in now, increasing performance through more breathing room for projects and applications. This may also signal similar changes of VRAM increases on their desktop counterparts, though that may stay a hope for now. We will have to wait and see what NVIDIA does soon.